Conservation not incorporated in maritime laws

Conservation not incorporated in maritime laws

SERPONG, West Java (JP): Conservation interests are relatively
new in Indonesia's maritime laws, most of which were enacted in
the 1960s chiefly to protect Indonesia's territorial sovereignty
and its economic resources, a top expert in maritime laws says.

"Our first concepts were based on political considerations,"
said Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, the former minister of foreign
affairs, who now heads the Center for Archipelago, Law and
Development Studies in Bandung.

He was referring to the establishment of territorial
borderlines at sea, later called Wawasan Nusantara, which he
helped draft in 1957. Maritime legislations after 1960 focused on
the need to utilize mineral resources under the sea.

Environmental awareness only came into the picture in 1975
after a Japanese tanker crashed and spilled crude oil, causing
mass pollution in the Malacca and Singapore straits.

"The accident increased our awareness of marine conservation
and pollution prevention," said Mochtar in his paper on the
challenges of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of
the Sea presented at the Sixth Congress on Science.

"The need to protect and preserve marine resources...is no
less important than the establishment of territorial borders and
national jurisdictions...," he said.

The Convention justified Indonesia's efforts since 1969 to
gain exclusive rights over natural resources within its waters
that span between 17,000 islands of the archipelago.

Indonesia's total territory is now 4.9 million square
kilometers, covering some 1.9 million square kilometers of land
and three million square kilometers of waters.

The challenge of the Convention, Mochtar said, lies in to what
extent Indonesia has met the obligations of the agreement,
particularly regarding marine conservation.

He underlined that Indonesia is also a signatory to the Agenda
21, an action plan for environment conservation issued at the
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992.

Among problems that remained unresolved is the lack of
standards for clean sea water, Mochtar said.

Until such standards are set, "we need a compromise, an
acceptable level" as a basis for action against signs of a
degrading marine environment, he said.

One particular hazard at sea is the presence of unused oil
rigs. Indonesia has tried to convert these structures into coral
beds, Mochtar said. "There are 172 unused oil rigs which the
contractors said are under the responsibility of (the state-owned
oil company) Pertamina."

"At first we thought of selling them as scrap, but we found
that tearing them apart and transporting them involves higher
costs than their scrap value," said Mochtar. "Then we found they
could serve as coral beds to attract fish," he said.

Despite the difficulty in handling environmental problems, the
1982 Environment Law and the establishment of the Office of the
State Minister of Environment, are important tools.

Mochtar said the Oceanology Institute, under the Indonesian
Institute of Sciences, should be given a higher status to be more
effective. (anr)